September 2005
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"Imagine you stop at the newsstand to buy a New York Times," one of the reporters said. "As you carry it to the counter, a stranger shoves a Daily News in your hand and shouts, 'Read this instead.' Then he tags along everywhere you go, popping up at inopportune times, dragging on your sleeve, and slowing your work down to a crawl." You may lose data or, in some cases, your whole computer. That's pretty much how the most insidious adware works. It sits, sometimes undetectably, on your computer, watching where you go on the Internet and feeding you ads based on what you do in cyberspace. When you show an interest in booking a flight on a particular airline, say, or buying a cell phone from one company, it blasts you with ads for the airline's or cell phone company's competitors, sometimes blanketing your screen with interlopers' offerings. And it makes your computer run … oh … so … slowly. How did spyware get onto your hard drive? At some point, when you downloaded free software, a screensaver, or a game, it came along for a ride, with or without your permission. Of course, you didn't know you gave permission. That little detail may have been buried in the legalese in the end-user license agreement. Remember when you clicked "I agree"? Now you know what you agreed to. Spyware is a seasoned operative: It can gather your Web surfing habits, your online buying choices, your e-mail address, and the configuration of your hardware and software. Neutralizing it isn't easy. Some applications insert several copies of themselves on your hard drive with no uninstall programs. Even if you do manage to find spyware and snuff it out, our experts found that some programs take as little as two seconds to re-create themselves and reappear on your computer. Our September 2005 protect yourself online report looks at the damage spyware causes and how you can protect your computer. We rate antispyware software, as well as antispam and antivirus software, and tell you the most effective way to use it. And we discuss consumer, corporate, and legislative approaches to curbing spyware. Consumers Union, the publisher of Consumer Reports, is pushing the federal government to crack down on companies that install a program on your computer without explaining--in plain English and where everyone can see it--exactly what's being installed and getting your explicit permission, and without an easy and foolproof way to uninstall it. CU also wants strict and enforceable laws requiring companies to disclose what they'll do with all the information their spyware collects. Before we let that stranger into our homes, we want to know a lot more about him.
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